Generation of a microresonator soliton comb via current modulation of a DFB laser

Abstract: Dissipative Kerr-microresonator soliton combs (hereafter called soliton combs) has been rapidly progressing as compact frequency combs. Comb mode scanning of the soliton combs with a large range and fast speed is of paramount importance for applications such as LiDAR and spectroscopy, requiring large and rapid frequency scanning of a pump continuous-wave (CW) laser as well as resonance frequency of a microresonator. Here, we demonstrate the generation of a soliton comb by a distributed feedback (DFB) laser toward the comb mode scanning with a large range and fast speed. Compared with conventional pump CW lasers (i.e. external cavity diode lasers: ECDLs), DFB lasers can be frequency-scanned more largely and rapidly without mode-hopping. In addition, because of the fast scan speed of the DFB laser, a single soliton comb is generated simply by controlling the injection current of the DFB laser, greatly simplifying the system without having any additional optical modulators such as a carrier-suppressed single-sideband modulator (CS-SSB modulator), acousto-optic modulator (AOM), and auxiliary CW laser.